My fucking mother. Even in death she was ruining my life.
I was sitting in an interrogation room at the sheriff’s station. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here, but my ass was sore from sitting in this metal chair for so long. My head was pounding and my back ached.
“Fuck.” I dropped my head into my hands and closed my eyes.
This was not how I’d planned on spending my day.
I’d stopped at the bar this morning to say hello to Thea, who’d been working on payroll. I needed some ideas on what to get Charlie for Christmas since I was going to do some shopping in Kalispell after I got Willa’s car cleaned.
When Sheriff Magee came through the door, I assumed it was just to say hello. He came in every now and again to make sure we knew he and his team were always available if there was trouble.
I certainly didn’t expect the sheriff to “invite” me down to the station for questioning—and request that I ride in the back of his cruiser.
At least he didn’t put me in cuffs or throw me in a jail cell. He just brought me into this room and explained that my mother had been found murdered. Then he told me that, at the moment, I was their number one suspect.
I was a murder suspect.
That was not a concept I could grasp. What I did know for certain was that I never should have answered Mom’s phone call three weeks ago.
My skull felt like it was going to split in two at any moment, so I rubbed the back of my neck, hoping to work out some of the kinks and get my headache to disappear. The pain was just beginning to let up when the door to the interrogation room opened and Sheriff Magee stepped inside.
He looked as tired as I felt.
We’d spent most of the day in here. He’d ask me questions and I’d answer into the recorder. Then I’d ask questions and he’d tell me what he could.
The only reason I’d agreed to talk to him without a lawyer present was because I trusted him. More importantly, Hazel trusted him. Those two butted heads all the damn time, but if she were in my shoes, she’d work with Sheriff Magee, not against him.
I just hoped my cooperation would be the key to my release, not my incarceration.
“Are you charging me?” I asked.
He shook his head and sank into the chair across from me. “Not today.”
My shoulders fell. “I didn’t do it.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“You don’t believe me.”
He thumbed through a pad of paper he’d brought in with him. “I’m not sure what to believe. The evidence I had this morning only pointed to you. But I’m still collecting puzzle pieces. Good news for you is that the more I get, the less the picture resembles your face.”
That was the best news I’d had all day. “So what now?”
“You go home for the night. I keep working until I have all the pieces.” He blew out a long breath and kept his seat. I was ready to bolt, but the sheriff had something more to say. “You’ve got a lot of people who love you. I hope you’re grateful for them.”
“I am.”
“And you’ve got a smart woman who pays attention to details.”
The hairs on my arms stood up. “You talked to Willa?”
“In that room.” He pointed to the wall at my back.
I nearly shot out of my chair to go next door. The last place I wanted her was in an interrogation room, but I kept my seat. “What did she say?”
“She told me you left your house that night after a phone call. And that you came back three hours and seven minutes later.”
She’d been awake? Fuck. I’d been so drunk and exhausted that I hadn’t realized.
“So . . .” Sheriff Magee drummed his fingers on the table. “Like I said. This morning, the evidence pointed to you. But now I know you were at home for a good portion of the night.”
“I told you that earlier.”
“You did.” He sighed. “And if I could take everyone at their word, my job would be a lot easier.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“And I’m inclined to believe you, Jackson. I really am. But I need proof. Until then, you’re still my number one suspect. I’m going to keep digging until I can prove it wasn’t you or I find someone else with the same means and motive.”
“Understood.” I nodded. “Did you call Dakota?”
“Just got off the phone. He’s coming right down.”
“Good.” I rubbed my neck. Dakota would provide an alibi for two of the hours I was away from home. Then all I needed was for something to come up to show Mom was alive during the other hour.
“Goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway.” Sheriff Magee pointed at me. “Don’t leave town.”
“No, sir.”
“I expect to hear back from the medical examiner sometime this week. Expect a phone call asking you to come back down.”
“Okay.” I stood from the chair. My lower back pinched and my legs were stiff, but I ignored them and held out a hand to Sheriff Magee.
“We’ll talk soon.” He shook my hand, then walked out the door.
I followed him out of the room, hoping to get a glimpse of Willa next door, but it was shut.
“She’s in the lobby.” Sheriff Magee glanced over his shoulder. “You’ve had a whole crew in here today, drinking all my coffee.”
I didn’t respond as I followed him through the bull pen and down the hallway that led to the lobby. Sheriff Magee opened the door for me, then stepped to the side.
I strode right past him into the lobby, where Logan and Thea were standing against a wall, whispering to one another. Hazel was sitting in one of the lobby chairs with her knee bouncing. And Willa was in the seat next to her.
The second they spotted me, the room breathed a collective sigh.
Thea said something. Hazel stood. But I kept my eyes on Willa.
She sat perfectly still, not leaving her chair. The look on her face was part relief, part frustration.
Was she pissed? She should be. I’d lied to her and made a huge fucking mistake, so she had every right to be mad.
I opened my mouth to apologize, but the front door to the station opened and Dakota walked inside, kicking the snow from his boots.
“Dakota?” Thea asked, turning to look at our employee. “What are you doing here? Who’s at the bar?”
“No one,” he told her. “I locked up when the sheriff called.”
“Thanks for coming down,” I told him, sending Thea a look that meant we’d talk later.
Dakota crossed the room and walked right up to Sheriff Magee. “Uncle.”
“Hi, bud. Come on back.”
Dakota nodded, clapped me on the shoulder, then followed the sheriff back into the station.
When the door closed behind them, the room went silent again. My gaze went back to Willa, where she still sat frozen.
“Willa.” I took a step forward, ready to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness. But before I could, she shot out of her chair and ran across the room.
She flung herself into my arms and the weight of a thousand worlds fell off my shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I hugged her tight, burying my face in her hair and breathing it in deep.
“You didn’t do it, so don’t apologize.”
“I didn’t do it.”
Her arms around my neck got tighter. “I know.”
She knows. Without any kind of explanation, she knew. She had that kind of faith in me.
“I love you.”
She leaned back, her blue eyes full of tears. “I love you too.”
I pulled her back in, wishing we were alone. There was so much I had to explain and I wanted some time for the two of us to just talk things out. But that wasn’t going to happen. First, I had to tell my little brother that our mother was never coming back for him because she was dead.
“Meet up at the bar,” Hazel declared as she collected her coat and purse. “We’ll talk there.”
I let Willa go and took Hazel’s hand. “I need to talk to Ryder.”
“It can wait.” She gave me the look I didn’t argue with. “He’s fine. He’s with Betty at home, probably doing homework. And I want to know what’s going on. Now.”
“Okay.” I sighed. “I need to get my things. I’ll be right behind you.”
As I went to the deputy at the desk to collect Willa’s car keys and my coat, everyone else hurried to leave. When I turned back around, the lobby was empty except for Willa, who stood by the door, waiting.
I took her hand as we walked outside, leading her right to my truck. “I didn’t get your car cleaned.”
She gave me a small smile. “You can do it later.”
“I will.” That was, if I wasn’t in prison. It all depended on what Sheriff Magee could dig up to prove my innocence.
Or whatever I could dig up to save myself.
“You drive.” She handed me my keys, then stood on her tiptoes to give me a quick kiss before going to the passenger door.
We got in and went directly to the bar, parking next to her car before going inside.
When we walked through the door, Hazel was already pouring Thea a glass of water and Logan a shot of whiskey. She held up the bottle, silently asking if I wanted a drink, but I shook my head.
Until this was all over, I wanted a clear head.
“Willa?”
“Just water for me.” She shrugged off her coat and took a chair at the table in the middle of the room where Thea and Logan were sitting.
“Jackson, lock the door,” Hazel ordered. “We’re closed for the rest of the day, and I don’t want any distractions.”
I nodded and turned back around, locking the door. Then I snagged an extra chair and slid it next to Willa’s.
“Okay. Start at the top,” Hazel said after she’d brought over drinks and we’d all sat down.
With a deep breath and an apologetic look at Willa, I dove in. “Mom called me about three weeks ago. That was the phone call I got the night I left the house.”
“I kind of figured that one out today,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“You should have told all of us.” Thea crossed her arms over her chest. “Was she calling you this entire time?”
I shook my head. “Just that once.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I guess I didn’t want to talk about her.” She’d been theoretically dead to me. Now, she actually was.
“What did she want?” Willa asked.
“Money.” I took a drink of my water, then sat back in my chair to explain the entire night. “She asked me to meet her somewhere. She said if I didn’t talk to her, she’d go to the authorities to take Ryder back. I didn’t want to even take the chance that she’d put him through it, so I met with her.”
I had just been trying to do right by Ryder. Even though I was working to get legal custody of him, my claim hadn’t been approved yet. Mom was still his legal guardian. I’d figured the fastest way to get her the hell out of Lark Cove again was a quick meeting to hear her out.
“I told her to meet me here in the parking lot. It was snowing pretty hard and I offered to talk inside, but she didn’t want to come in. She just told me that if I wanted to keep Ryder, I needed to give her three thousand dollars.”
“Did you?” Logan asked.
“No. I told her to go to hell, then got in my truck and drove off.”
Willa put her hand on my knee. “Then what?”
“Then nothing. I got back in my truck and drove around for a while. I was pissed and needed to think. After about an hour, I came back here and drank with Dakota for a couple hours.”
“That’s why Sheriff Magee called him down.” Thea snapped her fingers. “He’s your alibi for part of the night.”
I nodded. “He poured me tequila shots for two hours and kept me company, then drove me home.” Poor guy had walked from my house to his in the snow, but thankfully, Lark Cove was small and he didn’t live more than five minutes away.
Logan leaned forward in his chair. “So we just have to prove that during the hour you were driving around, you didn’t kill your mother.”
“That’s right,” I told him.
“How did she die?” Thea asked.
I shuddered as the photographs Magee had shown me earlier flashed through my mind. I think he’d shown me pictures of Mom’s lifeless body in order to gauge my reaction as well as to confirm she was in fact my mom.
I don’t know if it was what he’d been going for, but I’d almost puked up breakfast in the interrogation room’s trash can. The images of her gray skin and dead eyes were burned into my brain forever.
“She was strangled,” I said quietly. “In her car, they think. That’s where they found her. She’d turned off the highway onto Old Logger’s Road. I have no idea why she’d take that turn. Maybe she was lost or something, but that’s where they found her. Her car had been run off the road into some trees.”
“She died three weeks ago. Why are they just now finding her body?” Logan asked.
“It snowed,” Hazel explained. This was Logan’s first year in Montana, so it wasn’t a wonder he didn’t understand. Once upon a time, she’d taught me about those old roads too. “That road gets closed every winter because it sits at the base of two mountains. It drifts in so badly during the winter they can’t keep up with the plowing, so they just close it off until spring.”
“Someone must have followed her up there and killed her, then driven her car off the road,” Thea guessed.
I nodded. “And somehow we have to prove that someone wasn’t me.”
“But why?” Willa asked. “Why would they even think it was you? They just assumed that since you’re her son, you’d kill her? That makes no sense.”
I took another drink of my water, buying myself a minute. This was the part of my story I didn’t want to confess.
“I threatened her. When we were at the motel and after she dumped Ryder, I threatened her never to come back. I guess she thought I might be true to my word because when I met her in the parking lot here, she recorded our conversation on her phone. And I threatened her again, right before I drove off. I told her if she ever came back, I’d use her body as fishing bait.”
“Oh, Jackson,” Hazel muttered, shaking her head. “You didn’t.”
“How the fuck was I supposed to know she’d end up dead? I just wanted her to leave town.” I’d been pissed and not thinking clearly. I said some nasty words in the heat of the moment and now they might cost me my life.
“Magee found the recorder in her car,” I told them. “He found her phone and got the records so he knows I was the last person she called. So the evidence basically points to me following her out of the parking lot and killing her on an old deserted road.”
“What about fingerprints? Or her time of death?” Willa asked. “If she died after you were home, then you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“They didn’t find any prints in the car other than hers. Her body was frozen so Magee said the medical examiner might not be able to pinpoint exactly when she died. They’re doing an autopsy, but it will take a while. But the bottom line is, if they come back and say she died anytime during the hour when I was driving around, I’m fucked.”
I didn’t know what the odds were that he’d find more evidence, but at least they were better now than when he’d arrested me. This morning, Magee didn’t know that I’d gone home to Willa, and without her alibi, my window of opportunity was wide open.
Logan’s phone rang and he excused himself from the table to answer. The rest of us sat quietly, each staring blankly at the table.
“You smelled like perfume,” Willa whispered.
“Huh?”
She looked up at me. “You smelled like tequila and perfume when you came home.”
“It was Mom.” I sighed. “She was wearing strong perfume and she hugged me.”
She’d done it right before she’d asked me how Ryder and I were doing. The gesture had caught me off guard, so I’d just stood there. For a split second, I’d actually thought she’d regretted her decision to abandon him. But then she’d begged me for some money, giving me some bullshit sob story.
Looking back, I think the hug and the interest in Ryder were all part of her plan. She’d been recording me at the time. She’d put on a good show, pretending to be a mother who had fallen on hard times and needed some extra cash from her oldest son.
“How did they find her?” Thea asked. “The body and her car.”
“Magee told me that a couple was out cross-country skiing and came across her car yesterday afternoon.” I felt bad for those skiers. The image on the photograph I’d seen was bad enough; seeing it in person would have been awful.
Logan returned to the table and raked a hand through his hair. “We’ve got a lawyer coming down from Kalispell. She’ll be here soon.”
“Thanks.” I appreciated that he’d called in some help. And I had a feeling he wasn’t just doing it because Thea was his wife. Somewhere over the last couple of months, Logan and I had become . . . friends. I actually liked the guy. He was funny and smart. And he cared for the people in his life, me included.
“No problem.” He nodded. “I’m sure she’ll want to meet and discuss this with you as soon as she gets here.”
“Okay.” I blew out a long breath, glancing at the clock.
I needed to talk to Ryder, but I also needed to talk to this lawyer. I was going to need legal help if the autopsy came back with an incriminating time of death. This wasn’t a road to walk alone, and for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t even going to try.
I’d let the people at this table walk alongside me every step of the way.
“Do you think Magee believed you?” Willa asked. “That you didn’t do it?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I do. He told me more about Mom’s death and the evidence stacked against me than he had to. If he really thought I was guilty, he wouldn’t have shown me all his cards.”
Instead, Magee had treated me like an ally. He wasn’t trying to prove me guilty, he was trying to prove me innocent. So I’d told him every little detail I could think of, hoping it would help him put the puzzle together.
Magee had done a lot for me after I’d moved to Lark Cove. In part, I think he’d done it because of Hazel. But I’d learned over the years that he was one of the most honest men I’d ever met, so if he questioned my innocence, he would have told me so today.
“Okay. That’s that.” Hazel stood and clapped her hands. “We’d better get some dinner started. It’s going to be a long night.”
“I’ll help.” Thea stood too, holding out a hand for Logan. “Come on, gorgeous.”
The three of them disappeared behind the bar and into the kitchen, leaving me and Willa alone.
“I’m sorry.” I took her hand in mine. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you the truth.”
“Yes, you should have.” She gave me a sad smile. “But I understand why you didn’t.”
“Are you mad?”
“At your mom for putting you in this position? Yes. At you? No.”
I squeezed her hand tighter. “Do you believe me?”
“I believe you.” She slipped her hand free of mine to cup my cheek. Then she leaned up, kissed me gently and wrapped her arms around my neck. “It’ll be okay.”
I pulled her into my lap and held on tight. I really fucking hoped she was right, because as tough as I tried to be, going to prison and leaving her would break me apart.
